Effects of Managing Wildlife Openings on Wild
Turkey Reproduction in a Forested Ecosystem in
Mississippi

Principal InvestigatorDr. Stephen J. Dinsmore
Mississippi State University Department of Wildlife and
Fisheries

Graduate Research
AssistantBrad Holder
Mississippi State University Department of Wildlife and
Fisheries

In Mississippi, the ecology of wild turkeys has been extensively
studied for more than 20 years, mainly through long-term studies on
Tallahala Wildlife Management Area (in the Bienville National
Forest) and on private timber company lands. Collectively,
these studies provided information on annual age- and sex-specific
survival, nesting success, recruitment, habitat use, cause-specific
mortality, and many other aspects of turkey ecology. Although
these studies have provided a tremendous amount of information
about turkeys in Mississippi, there are still information gaps
where further research is needed. One of these areas is how
habitat manipulations affect turkey reproduction.

Management of wildlife openings is one of the main opportunities
for turkey habitat management on private and public lands.
Basic information on turkey reproductive success is readily
available, but these studies have not investigated effects of
habitat management through carefully designed experiments.
Turkey reproductive success can be divided into three
segments: nesting success, poult (brood) survival, and
juvenile survival to age one. Careful measures of each of
these three components are necessary to fully understand turkey
reproductive ecology.

Information on the effects of small-scale habitat manipulations
on turkey reproduction will aid wildlife managers interested in
better managing this species. Careful measures of nesting
success and poult survival, and how they are affected by existing
and experimental habitat manipulations, will provide these managers
with a better understanding of some of the mechanisms influencing
turkey reproduction in Mississippi and will suggest future
management options.

Monitoring wild turkey reproductive success is important to
wildlife managers to track population changes over time. Although
this hen probably laid a dozen eggs, she has successfully reared
only four poults, most likely due to predation and poor
brood-rearing habitat quality.

Graduate student Brad Holder (right) places a radio transmitter on
the back of this captured hen so that he can monitor her movements,
habitat selection, and reproductive success.